Domestic Geek

I've caught my stitching bug again. I haven't been very crafty at all the last 2 years, but lately I've dug out the cross stitch stuff and when I can tear myself away from the Facebook groups and Ravelry Cross Stitch group, I have been getting some stitching done.

I have been going more frequently to a cute shop in Littleton called Fancimats & More. The owner, Cindy, is such a doll. I love that I can request something from her on Facebook and if she can get it in, she'll give me a call to come get it when it arrives. I really try to support her locally if I can because I really want her to be around a long time. I was so bummed when the needlework shop I went to in Aurora went out of business. I found her one day when I was still in my knitting obsession as her shop in located right next door to a yarn shop.

I've become hooked on Lizzie Kate charts at the moment. I've got several in my queue to do. I finished the one called "Dogs Leave Paw Prints" twice. The first time, I stitched on it off and on for over a year. When I went to wash the blue disappearing ink pen out of it that I had used to grid the fabric, they turned into dark brown lines. I was so bummed as nothing I did would make them disappear. Lesson learned - I'm only gridding with fishing line or some kind of threat (metallics work well). The second one worked up more quickly. Anyway, there are always cute little boxes done up all over Fancimats and I kept asking the owner if she was going to have a class on them, but one never happened. I finally asked someone on a Facebook group for instructions on how she finished hers and combined with a couple of other tutorials I finally found online - I came up with this. Mr. T was not particularly happy that I made him pose with it, though.



I'm currently finishing up a crafting Santa from Prairie Schooler's Santa series. Here's my progress as of 10/26. I had planned to finish it up this weekend while we were home, but alas, such was not meant to be. I got this week's Team Housewares tournament poster done instead, so that's cool. Maybe by next weekend it will be finished.



I'm also about halfway done with my ruffled scarf I've been knitting. I was really hoping that would be done before winter set in, but I have totally lost my knitting bug.

OK, that's it for an update on my current crafting projects. I'm going to go try to read in bed for a bit before I conk out. Time changes always kick my butt. Sadly, we have to go back to Denver tomorrow. Really not looking forward to that.

I haven't accomplished much today and it felt wonderful!

We got into Keystone after 2 am last night. I really tired to get out of work by 3 so we could hit the road at the start of rush hour, but of course that didn't happen. I got off a little after 4, then forgot it was rent day, so I had to go to the bank to deposit my check. Then there was a couple of things I needed from the store as well as a Chipotle stop for dinner. Fortunately, we had packed almost everything the night before, so we got on the road a little before 7, but traffic still sucked. Between coffee, 80s on Eight on Marcus' Sirius radio and my Kindle app, I did manage to stay awake for the whole trip (I usually zonk out between Cheyenne and Wheatland). We rolled in a half an hour later than expected due to the large amounts of deer on the sides of the road between Edgemont and home. The last thing you want to ruin your vacation is hitting a stupid deer. After getting all our gear into the house and unpacking the cooler, I think I conked out about 3:30.

It was no surprise then, that I didn't wake up until 11 this morning. It is so quiet here that I sleep amazingly well. Since it is not tourist season, there wasn't even an 1880s Train to wake me up. I fixed some coffee and bagels for us to eat for breakfast while Marcus took T out.

I puttered around for a bit and sometime around 1 (I think), I took the Kindle to bed to read and next thing I know, it's 4. I've been battling something viral for the last 3 weeks and my typical insomnia and I think my poor body just needed rest.

I had grand plans of doing some design work for Marcus and getting some stuff here unpacked, but none of it happened. I did make a pot of potato leek soup for dinner and baked Marcus some oatmeal raisin cookies, but that's about it for the day. Oh, I've read a bit more of book 3 of the Game of Thrones series.

We were visited by some deer this afternoon while I was making the soup:

I don't know why it is so hard to get back on the blogging bandwagon. I used to live to post on this thing, spending countless hours making it pretty, reaching out to other bloggers. I saw a friend on Facebook writing that she was trying to get back into blogging via NaBlogPoMo and I thought about how I tired that last year and lasted a whole 2 days before something happened (no idea what as I didn't blog about it). Well, let's try this thing yet again, shall we?

The first post is short and sweet as I am posting from the car as we are on our way up to the homestead in South Dakota for the weekend.

I was doing a little blog-surfing a couple of days ago and saw one of those sidebar scripts that said somebody's Blogiversary was in XX days and I checked to see when I started on my own blogging adventure. 12 years ago today I joined blogger and started up on the freeservers site that I set up to host the rudimentary web sites I was scripting in my html class at CollegeAmerica. Wow, time flies! Thanks to the Wayback Machine, I can even see what it looked like back then. LaDonnaBlog - that was original, huh? I didn't really intend for it to be anything more than a place to keep friends/family up to date on what was going on with me while I was so busy with school and work and I certainly didn't think I'd still have it online over a decade later.

Sadly, I've been neglecting the old place because of Facebook - must remedy that. I'd hate for Facebook to go away and not have a record of the major milestones in my life. I often refer to my archives to determine when an important life event took place. Looking back, I haven't documented anything about Mr. T (our Jack Russell Terrier) or anything about the process of moving the house to South Dakota.

I'm hoping there will be many exciting and life-changing events in the near future. I can't wait to be able to share them as the happen as I set off on year 13.

I hate how depression messes with you. You don't realize how bad things have been until you are in are in one of your better moments and look back at the events of the last 6 months and realize you've only done just enough to cope and get by. The insomnia, the inability to do anything creative, the despair, the anger, the procrastination, the isolation - all depression's fault. I always suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder in the winter, but I think this year was particularly bad for me. I'm sure part of that had to do with moving to this apartment complex plus having that new chick in my office at work.

It's probably a good thing we got a dog and I had someone that I had to take care of or I probably would have sunken further.

I'm sitting here surveying the damage. I think I've only cleaned the apartment once since we moved in. My few possessions I have here are totally disorganized. That dinky kitchen is a disaster area. I have only completed 2 small craft projects - one for a swap that I had to force myself to do as I was on a deadline and one was a crocheted snowflake for a family that lost their mother/wife to a brain aneurism. I sit down to cross stitch and manage about 10 stitches at a time. I just haven't been able to focus. I've tried on many occasion to get back to this old blog, but couldn't think of anything I really wanted to share. It's still broken from an update to the CMS I did awhile back and haven't had the motivation to fix it.

I tried to put my best face forward on Facebook and only post mundane things. I spent many years complaining about everything little thing on this blog and Marcus nicknamed it the "blog of woe." When I catch myself doing that on Facebook, I erase it. I know in this post I'm continuing the "blog of woe," but I need to vent and remind myself of all that is going on so that I may work on changing it while I'm not in depression's grip.

I don't know if it is because it is Spring, or because this last week got so bad that I finally had enough, but I actually feel motivated to change things. I'm tired of being the only capable data processor at work and having too much on my plate the last week of every month. I'm tired of being underpaid for what I really do there. I'm tired of having nobody I can talk to there about these frustrations (supervisors, HR, etc) that can or will do anything about it. I'm tired of being in a soul-sucking, non-creative desk job with no future. I'm tired of being stuck in an office with no music since they made us get rid of our radios. I'm tired of having allergy attacks all day at work because my co-worker in my office is either totally insensitive or dumb and won't stop coming to work laden in some offensive fragrance despite me repeatedly telling her it sets off my allergies. She also hasn't grasped how to do this job after 6 months, yet they still employ her. She was touted as being an Excel expert when they hired her. A couple of days ago, she was struggling with a client list because she doesn't know how to make new columns, copy & paste from cell to cell or do a "text to columns" - all pretty basic Excel stuff. Plus, I showed her how to do that on this same list the month before and watched her take notes. I'm tired of one of the other data processors that, despite being in the country for over 20 years, doesn't understand English and refuses to do things according to department standards and yet he keeps his job. I'm tired of my other co-worker who is the brother-in-law of the owner, is over 70 and is having issues remembering how to do his job and yet they keep him employed instead of having him retire simply because he claims he wouldn't know what to do with his life if he didn't have a job to go to every day. I'm tired of living in this overcrowded rat cage called Denver. I'm tired of driving all over hell to take care of my animals that are scattered in foster homes because I can't have them here. I'm tired of the lack of quality time Marcus and I have together due to our stupid jobs (ever since our company "upgraded" the plant manager software, he spends almost every waking moment fixing that stupid crap). I'm tired of not having the funds to get my car fixed. I'm tired of not having room to cook or bake. I'm tired of not being able to prepare meals, because I usually end up eating alone anyway because something at work is broken. I'm tired of the creepy, legally-blind lady that is always sitting outside on her balcony because she has to smoke and always wants to chat. There's more, but man...that is enough for now.

We're going to start moving some of our stuff up to the house in South Dakota next week. I've got to figure out how to follow soon thereafter. Marcus keeps reminding me that I have a "Large Toolbox" and that I need to use it. I know he's right, I just need to quit being afraid and do something. I feel so peaceful and at ease up there. I do feel like I've come home when I'm there. I also ordered a juicer (should be here Monday) and I'm getting serious about getting this extra weight off. Mom died early because she didn't take care of herself. I had a sobering thought last week as my supervisor was telling me about how the women in her family live long. If I lived as long as my mother, I'd only have a little over 5 years left on this planet. I'm not going to let that happen.

I think my highest weight was around 315 pounds. I'm not quite sure as I was in one of the big depression bouts similar to what I just experienced, but I do remember a 315 on the scale at one point. If that's the case, between the change in my diet to as many unprocessed and organic foods as possible and having a dog to walk, I'm down 55 pounds. I keep thinking that i was basically carrying around a 50 lb flour sack like I used to sling at the pizza place every day on my poor body every day. What sucks is I'm still dragging around a little over 2 more of those. I'm amazed at how much better I feel now than I did a couple of years ago. I can't wait to see how much better I feel when I've dropped a couple of more flour sacks. That's another reason I want to get up to South Dakota. That Mickelson Trail that Marcus rides is 109 miles - lots for me and T to explore.

Anyway, that's where I'm at now. Hopefully the next few weeks will bring about major changes. I'm so ready to move onto a new chapter in my life.